The Devil — Spiritual Message of the Day

June 9, 2013

“Many of the faults you see in others are your own nature reflected in them.” — Rumi

An important meaning of this card is “confronting your demons.” This means demons like repressed anger, impulses, vices, addictions, obsessions, and prejudices. These demons also may be called our “shadow issues” for we have thrust them deep into the shadows of our psyche where we can avoid looking at them and pretend they don’t exist. But being out of sight does not mean they are gone. They are still able to cause problems, whether we shine a light on them or not. All too often they exert sinister effects on our lives that are inexplicable since we pretend they don’t exist.

Actually, we do see these demons sometimes, but we see them in other people instead of in ourselves. Perhaps our heightened sensitivity to these issues makes us keenly aware of them in others. Often, however, we are merely projecting our dark motives onto things that other people say or do, and this is how we see our shadow issues reflected in them. In either case, we are quick and eager to condemn those people, but what we are really doing is trying to deny our own demons by being loudly repelled by them in someone else. For example, it has become almost a truism that the most vociferously homophobic politicians are the ones who end up being discovered in tawdry, clandestine gay affairs.

This is why we should be thankful for the people who really push our buttons—they provide us with a mirror that reveals our own shadow issues that we need to confront and work on. Why should we do this? First of all, as long as our demons remain unacknowledged in the shadows, they can control us, but when we become conscious of them, we are able to get a handle on them instead. Also, since they represent a great deal of energy that the ego has misdirected, if we become conscious of them, we can redirect that energy and reclaim the power we need to move forward with our lives. Finally, we want to confront and banish our demons because the fewer of them we have inside, the more room there will be for the Divine.

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